World Football News: Wenger blasts FIFA’s World Cup bid decision
Arsene Wenger whose team face a crucial encounter against Fulham on the upcoming weekend was one of the managers in the English Premier League, supporting England’s bid for the 2018 World Cup. As it turned out on 2nd of December in Zurich, England
were rather humiliated as they exited the voting process in the first round after securing just 2 votes out of the total 22. Not only that, in the aftermath of the bidding process where Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup and Russia was awarded the 2018 World
Cup, many people in the English media have come out and questioned the wisdom behind FIFA’s decision.
Others have been pointing fingers at the FIFA executive committee and making dangerous accusations. Arsene Wenger who featured prominently in England’s 2018 bid’s video presentation in Zurich recently came out and termed FIFA’s decision to award the world
cup to Russia as a decision from the middle ages. Such harsh criticism for football’s governing body by one of the top managers in world football comes at a crucial time when FIFA is looking for support for its bold decisions on 2nd of December,
2010.
Wenger has his own problems as well regardless of the fact that his team are second in the English league table at the moment. Arsenal must win against Partizan Belgrade in their upcoming mid-week matches and then also get a favorable result against Manchester
United on the next weekend. In the month of December, Arsenal also face Chelsea in one of the most vital ties of the English Premier League season.
Following FIFA’s decision to award the 2018 World Cup to Russia, Arsene Wenger remarked, "I'm very sad because I supported that bid as much as I could. I am sad for the people who have a passion in England for football. I don't believe FIFA was conscious
of how much it meant to people here. I watched as well how much the people worked for this bid and they put some unbelievable quality work in."
Wenger who has been a critic of FIFA in the past due to their unflinching stance on video technology has always promoted innovative ideas which take football into the 21st century. Arsene added, "It looked to me a little bit of a Middle Age way
to decide. You would like to have much more technical criteria than human criteria. You could have 100 criteria for example with a different weight and you put that in a computer and the best comes out. It doesn't look right in modern life that people have
to go over there and lobby and say 'please believe in us.' I would like to see it be more technical.”
Speaking about a reform to FIFA’s voting process, the ex-Monaco manager said, "You have to work in the modern life to get all suspicion out. Is the suspicion right or wrong I don't know, but you don't want a vote of that importance to be the subject of suspicion."
Wenger was also quite disappointed at the fact that England went out of the voting process in the very first round after just securing 2 votes. He said, "I personally cannot understand that. I was a great supporter of that bid. You have to take it on board
and get on with it.”
Wenger further said that, the World Cup has not come to English soil since 1966; he also went onto press the fact that England is the homeland of football, a place where the sport was refined after its early origins in China. However, Arsene was also humble
as he said, “Russia is a good candidate and congratulations to them. But we all do not know why the England bid has failed so much."
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